


Until the Last Brick Falls

by LongGiraffeLady



Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: Fluff, Humor, Parade of Cameos, Peter Parker feels very strongly about infrastructure
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-27
Updated: 2021-01-27
Packaged: 2021-03-12 21:14:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29017227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LongGiraffeLady/pseuds/LongGiraffeLady
Summary: In which Peter Parker has strong feelings about public infrastructure.
Kudos: 13





	Until the Last Brick Falls

The first time a sewer grate falls out from under Peter's feet, he's not sure if he's being attacked or if it's just because he's back in Queens. 

He gets his answer when the Lizard jumps out from behind a corner screaming, "You will taste my wrath!"

"I'm not hungry," Peter yells back. 

Their fight lasts over an hour and overwhelms the already overstressed sewage system. By the time Peter sneaks into the house, May's already asleep, and Peter falls into his bed to reports of flooded bodegas and basements on the news. His dreams are full of mutant lizard-people and toilet paper.

When a building collapses the very next week with them inside, Peter starts to wonder if maybe there's something wrong with the city's infrastructure. After all, there had only been minimal fire damage this time. 

"Are buildings in New York just more _fragile_ than in other cities?" he wonders. Peter hadn’t been in Europe for very long, but aside from that one incident at the airport, he doesn’t remember quite so many things breaking.. 

He watches rubble crumble into dust as Bucky Barnes stomps away in a fog of ash and smoke. Bloody footprints lead them out onto the street and Peter sticks close as the crowd parts around Bucky like he's Moses and they're the Red Sea. "I don't know, kid. I wasn't doing a lot of sightseeing while I was away, y'know."

"But shouldn't buildings be, like, harder than this?" Peter insists. “Do you think someone-” he lowers his voice, “-cut corners?”

“I don’t think anyone-” Bucky looks around quickly before lowering his voice, “-cut corners”. It’s hard to tell because Bucky has more decades of being covert under his belt than Peter’s even been alive, but he has the distinct feeling he’s being made fun of. "These buildings are older than your grandmother. Give 'em some damn respect." 

The tracks turn down an alleyway and Peter sighs. The smell of garbage is always so hard to get out of the nano-fibers of his suit. 

"What?"

"Nothing."

"Not the garbage thing again," Bucky sighs.

"I can't just throw the suit in the wash," Peter complains. "It's dry clean only."

Bucky stops in front of the second sewer grate Peter's had to get too close to this week. The footprints end here and Bucky grins meanly. "Bet you wish we could fight in the garbage now, huh?"

Peter sighs again. Maybe he can ask Mr. Stark to pay for his dry cleaning just this once. 

~

The next time it happens is upsetting. By the time Peter arrives, the Avengers are already there the building is already wrecked.

"Hey Peter, don't you live close to here?" Sam asks when he touches down beside him. He’d mentioned on the comms that he was going to a perimeter of the neighbourhood and by the look on his face, he hadn't found the culprit.

"Yeah," Peter replies. He hears the firemen give the all clear; nobody’s been hurt. 

Sam’s not watching the firemen anymore. "You alright?" he asks.

"Just - sucks, y'know?"

Because it may not have been a New York institution but it had been Peter's middle school. He could point out where the library should have been, the gymnasium. It had meant something to him.

“Nobody got hurt,” Sam tells him, even though he knows Peter knows. .

Peter keeps his eyes on the building - what’s left of it, at least. If they water, it’s only because the smoke hasn’t dispersed yet.

~

Now that he's noticed it, he can’t seem to stop noticing it. 

He chats with Tony and Bruce, and it soon becomes apparent that they can’t really blame any engineers, architects, or swindling businessmen for what’s happening to the city. Every once in a while a fire escape may fall off the wall it’s screwed onto, but in general, things don’t really just _break_ spontaneously. Once Peter starts looking, it also becomes apparent that things tend to break a lot more when the Avengers are around.

One day Thor lands in a burst of lightning beside the Air and Space Museum, and Peter watches the airplanes sway from the ceiling. 

"Why don't we ask Sam to drop you off next time," Peter suggests as they head towards where Namor is flooding Hudson. There's a foot deep impression of Thor's boot in the road and a car almost hits Peter as it swerves to avoid it. 

"Absolutely not," Sam says over the comms.

“The Son of Will could not bear my weight, my little friend,” Thor chuckles, and Peter isn’t sure that’s true but then he catches a glimpse of Sam’s face as he flies overhead and shuts his mouth. He pushes some cement back into the hole it came from, instead.

When the streets have been drained and Namor pacified with the promise of a walk and talk with the Mayor, Peter swings back to Queens and prays that May hasn’t noticed that he’s gone yet.

~

The very next day the Hulk gets tossed through Central Park, shattering several groves of trees. 

"Be careful," Peter hisses.

"Okay. Hulk will try,” Hulk says, dazed from the fall and also from when his head had knocked a plaque off its stand. 

"Thanks, dude." Peter tries to give him a hand up, and gets yanked off his feet. 

~

One day, Peter’s crouching beside Clint on a roof, just biding his time until he gets called in. They’re on surveillance detail for this part of the mission, and Clint’s easy to be around.

Peter worries about failing English class because he’s 10 days late to hand in his essay on the importance of metaphor in poetry and Clint tells him about growing up in the circus and throwing knives for tips. 

When Cap radios in to let them know he’s heading for the rendezvous point, Peter and Clint flip a coin to decide who’ll have to do the work. Which is why when a biosynthetic robot trundles down the alley below him, he’s in the perfect position to watch as Clint draws an exploding arrow, aims and shoots _around_ the corner of the building instead of through it. Peter’s giddy. 

He crawls down the side of the wall until he’s looking at the smashed bot over Clint’s shoulder. “You’re a good guy, Clint.”

Clint jumps. “Thanks, Pete.” They watch the robot spark for a long moment. “You’re getting my neck kinda sweaty there, Pete.” He doesn’t sound like he minds though, so Peter doesn’t move.

“Hey Clint,” Peter says.

“Yeah, buddy?”

“How much do you know about poetry?”

~

It starts to feel inevitable, eventually, and Peter watches the destruction occur and feels powerless to stop it. Buildings, parks, bike racks - nothing is spared. They get crushed under the weight of the Hulk’s body and melt under the heat of Rhodey’s hastily fired lasers, and it’s all collateral damage to them, but to other people those things had been important; they had meant something too.

“Peter,” Cap says, and Peter’s spine straightens. The first time it had happened Peter had thought it was pavlovian, but then he’d watched everyone else in the room do it too and realized it was just Cap. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Peter says.

Cap - he’d told Peter to call him Steve, but there’s no way Peter can do that - gives him a look. “Did you know that it’s a crime to lie to Captain America.”

Peter had not. “I work outside the law,” he says.

Cap laughs and they settle into a comfortable silence that’s broken by the wail of a fire truck approaching. 

“You’re doing it again,” Cap says, and when Peter turns he sees that he’s being watched. 

“Doing what?”

“You’re frowning,” he says, and he’s frowning too now. He hesitates for a moment and then seems to come to a decision. “Tony mentioned you were asking about home insurance. Thinking of buying a house, Peter?” His eyes glimmer.

“Urk,” Peter says.

Cap ignores him. “He also mentioned something about fire escapes?”

“Oh,” Peter says. He’d forgotten about that, “That.”

“Peter, what’s going on?” He looks so worried, so honest-to-god concerned, and Peter realizes that maybe he’s talking to the one person who would understand how he feels.

“Have you noticed,” Peter says carefully, “that whenever superheroes get involved, there are usually a lot more buildings at the start of a fight than there are at the end?”

“So you noticed that, huh?” Captain America does not sound very upset about the destruction of his city. 

Peter boggles. “You knew?”

Cap shrugs. “Who do you think gets reamed out over the expense reports?” There’s a little smile that seems to be hiding in the corners of his eyes.

“Who,” Peter says slowly, ”is reaming out Captain America?”

“You’d be surprised,” Cap replies.

Contemplating the chain of command above Captain America promises to be an interesting thought exercise, but now that the topic has been broached, Peter’s not willing to give up on it. “Why aren’t you more upset? All these homes, people’s livelihoods!”

“Of course I’m upset.”

“Are you?” In the face of Cap’s - baffling - indifference, Peter feels all the fight drain out of him. Suddenly, he just feels overwhelmingly tired.

Cap’s hands on his shoulder are a shock. “I think you have to remember why we’re doing this, Peter. We wanted to save people’s lives.” He waves his arms at the scene around them. “The buildings don’t matter if we can save even one person’s life.”

And Peter knows all that, but he can’t help but wonder what the point of surviving is when there’s nothing to come back to. “But it’s their homes, Cap. Everything they have is in there.” Peter says.

Cap nods. “There are programs in place to help them out afterwards.” When Peter opens his mouth to interrupt, Cap holds his hand up to stop him. “I know it’s not perfect, and I know we can be better. But until we are better, at least they’ll survive.”

“Is that enough?” Peter wonders.

Cap considers. “I think if it was me,” he says slowly, “I would want to live. No matter what.” 

Peter thinks of his aunt May and his home, and when it’s one against the other, there’s no contest. Still - “But you grew up poor,” he mumbles. “You were grateful for like, oranges.”

“And I would have given up every one of those oranges if it meant Bucky would survive. Or my mom.” Peter would too. He'd give up anything - not just oranges.

“All the oranges?” Bucky’s voice says from behind Peter, and Cap smiles.

“I might’ve kept one or two."

Bucky claps his hand on Peter’s shoulder and pulls him towards the rubble that surrounds them. He winks at Peter. “One or two of the three oranges we had, huh? I’m a lucky guy aren’t I, Pete?.”

Cap hurries to Peter’s other side. “We had more than three oranges,” he protests.

When they reach the edge of the mess, Bucky just leans down to start hauling the rubble away. “Shut your trap and me help out."

Peter takes a look around. There's destruction, of course, lots of it. Lots. 

But there's also life. Lots of of it.

He helps out.


End file.
